WFTV In Spain: What Jobs Will Rail Bring?

Getting high-speed rail to Central Florida was a battle. It passed partly on the promise of jobs. WFTV went all the way to Madrid, Spain to find out what kinds of jobs came with the trains.

The Spanish are experts with 20 years of high-speed rail experience and, while Florida's first trains are promising thousands of jobs, WFTV wanted to find out who the trains would be hiring.

By the end of the year, Spain could have the largest high-speed rail network in the world with more than 1,000 miles of tracks.

“When we started in '92 with a line between Madrid and Seville, nobody believed in the high-speed trains,” Fernando Aznar Alonso of train company Talgo said.

Now, leaders say it has created tens of thousands of jobs. Florida has been promised 23,000 jobs for the 90-mile line planned between Orlando and Tampa.

Executives with Spanish train maker Talgo say it's possible. The idea is to have something like Talgo’s smaller factories in Florida, with local workers building the trains. Four-hundred-eight-five people work at the smaller Talgo factory, but experts say the jobs that come with high-speed rail aren't limited to construction.

“It goes from blue collars to white collars. It's a lot of engineering,” said Jose Uriarte, Bombardier Inc. “This requires a lot of safety equipment and technology, which comes close to military-safety standards.”

WFTV rode the Talgo 350 going about 160 miles per hour. But it is just one of the many companies lining up for a piece of the action in Florida.

The train WFTV was on costs about $34 million. A slightly slower model runs $22 million.

The first $1.2 billion installment of federal money to build Florida's high-speed rail system comes with "buy American" rules, meaning foreign companies could have to open new factories in the U.S. to qualify.

Spain is no stranger to competition. The system there uses trains and equipment made by at least four different countries.

“We're not afraid at all to compete. We're used to competing and as we've delivered many trains in the past,” Uriarte said.

Other companies interested in Florida's high-speed rail project include Siemens from Germany, Alstom of France, the Central Japan Railway, and American firms GE and Lockheed Martin.